Virtual body parts take the guesswork out of medicine

Doctors could soon be testing medications or surgery on your virtual twin before you get to undergo the real treatment.

Researchers around the world are creating different personalised simulations of living body parts, so that bespoke therapies can be tested and optimised without risk to the patient.

A virtual model developed by a team at Université Libre de Bruxelles replicates a person’s gait and is about to be trialled in clinics as a way of analysing the effects of conditions such as cerebral palsy.

Elsewhere, computer scientists at University College London have created bespoke simulations of blood flowing through a brain aneurism, while researchers at the University of Oxford have modelled changing blood flow through the heart as it contracts. Such models could be used to test how drugs affect, say, how blood flows through the affected area.